Raj Babbar can’t help Congress in Uttar Pradesh polls: BJP

Lucknow: Making actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar the chief of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh will not help the party in the assembly elections next year, BJP leader Keshav Prasad Maurya said on Thursday.

Maurya, who heads the Uttar Pradesh unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters in Gorakhpur district that forget Raj Babbar, even Rahul Gandhi or Priyanka Gandhi will not be able to revive the fortunes of the Congress in the state.

“It is a leaderless and a bankrupt party which neither has any policies nor any direction,” said Maurya, who represents Phulpur constituency in Allahabad district in the Lok Sabha.

The BJP has been working towards ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ at the national level and “SP (Samajwadi Party) and BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) Mukt UP,” he said. He said the Akhilesh Yadav government was the worst ever in the history of Uttar Pradesh, giving as it has been a free rein to criminal elements.

The BJP will ensure that the corrupt, the casteist and the criminal elements are voted out in the next assembly elections, he added. Maurya was in Gorakhpur to oversee the preparations for a public rally to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 22.